Pick Stocks by Picking Companies with Staying Power

If you’re ready to brave the chilly waters of Wall Street and pick your own stocks, the Motley Fools, founders of the Web site by the same name, let you in on some of their secrets for making smart choices in The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers, Rule Makers by David and Tom Gardner (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999; $25).

They give you insight into looking behind the hype about a company and evaluating whether it has staying power.

The authors talk about the rule makers (stocks–such as Coca-Cola and General Electric–that will give you good returns over the long haul) and the rule breakers (upstart businesses–such as Amazon.com–that, as the book’s dust jacket says, “take their industries by storm”).

You’ll learn techniques for evaluating a company and how to identify the rule breakers that, if you’re lucky, will lead you to a bright financial future.